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Tor.com is happy to share the cover for the UK edition of Peter F. Hamilton’s The Abyss Beyond Dreams, the first book in the Chronicle of the Fallers, coming October 2014 from Tor UK! (The US edition will be published by Del Rey.) The book is set in the Commonwealth Universe and comes chronologically between The Commonwealth saga and The Void trilogy.

Julie Crisp, the Editorial Director of Tor UK, shares some of the design process for the cover, including the inspiriation behind the look for Hamilton’s new series.

Peter F. Hamilton has been published by Macmillan for over twenty years now and in that time we’ve had several different looks for his covers, from the original iconic covers of the brilliant Jim Burns, through to the huge epic landscapes of Steve Stone. But this is science fiction—where would we be without some form of evolution?

Jim Burns' cover art forThe Temporal Void

We wanted to do something different with the new book, and revisit the Commonwealth series. They are such filmic, exciting adventures that we wanted a treatment to reflect that. We looked at several different forms of media for inspiration—games, comparable authors, and films. Here are just some of the numerous images we looked at:

When I first saw the concept I was blown away. Since then, with Peter’s help, we’ve gone into detail with character descriptions, background action scenes and colour schemes. We’re hopeful that the cover will manage to capture the attention of that most elusive of creatures—the science fiction naysayer.

The difficulty with this genre has always been trying to persuade those cinema goers who are more than happy to watch the most recent Star Trek (and not just for Benedict Cumberbatch and Chris Pine), or sit through the boxset of Battlestar Galactica, or eagerly speculate about the new Christopher Nolan film Interstellar, but then claim they never read science fiction. They have no idea what they’re missing out on—we wanted to show them!

Peter’s novels are epic, thrilling adventures following original and brilliant characters. His main protagonist Nigel Sheldon is every bit as sexy as anything Star Trek has to offer (sorry, Benedict), the politics and character encounters are just as involved and explosive as a Game of Thrones plot and the action and pace is no less than any Matt Damon/Tom Cruise blockbuster.

Hopefully the new look will encourage all those who claim they don’t read science fiction to give it a go…

The US cover was revealed a few months ago and they’ve gone with this rather stunning look.

We were all thrilled with it, as was Peter who said: ‘This is exactly the kind of image I’ve been wanting on the books, a stylish design incorporating character with the kind of dramatic starscape my stories are associated with.” Hope you love it as much as we do.

You can read an extract of the novel on the Tor UK blog, and be sure to stop by and see Peter F. Hamilton on his upcoming UK tour, the dates for which are found below: